


I’ll Try and Fix You, May 1, 1971

by MissAtomicBomb77



Series: For the Greater Good, Let's Do the News [21]
Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-04 17:38:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1083792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissAtomicBomb77/pseuds/MissAtomicBomb77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There twenty two days where no one in the world thought of her as a living breathing human and that was compounded by the fact that she was unable to do anything about it as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Saturday, May 1, 1971  
1:15am  
United Press International Satellite Office  
Outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia

 

Ed Ryan didn’t believe it when he heard the call come over the radio. He believed so little of it, he waited, asked again, confirmed again and asked them to bring her here if she was agreeable. She was, and the frail figure sat in a metal chair before him. He clicked off the dates in his mind. She had been gone for twenty three days. They honestly thought she was dead after only five days. This meant that there twenty two days where no one in the world thought of her as a living breathing human and that was being compounded by the fact that she was unable to do anything about it as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese.

One of the soldiers carried her in the building and set her into that chair. She said absolutely nothing as Ed came down to his knees to look her in the face. He needed to see her for himself. He could tell at once that the time wasn’t kind to her. He didn’t want to even think what could have happened to her because she was a woman. She lost weight, too much of it, he could tell immediately by how the dark prisoner clothes hung on her frame. He looked at her eyes and they looked blank, like she was caught in her own dream. Her blonde hair was caked to her head and every visible inch of her skin was caked in dirt and in some places, blood. Her feet were the exception, bandaged in clean white strips. He didn’t want to think what those strips covered.

Ed tried to rub nonexistent tears from her cheeks as a test. Would she smack him away? Would she lean into him? Would she start to cry then? She didn’t do anything to resist his touch, but her eyes did focus on him for the first time since she had arrived at the office for just a moment before looking away, blank. Ed couldn’t help himself, letting his one hand cup her face, perhaps only to be able to claim on his deathbed that he had at least for one moment in his life touched an honest to god miracle. Finally, he asked permission of her to do what he didn’t dare do until he saw her himself. “Lee,” his gruff voice said, “Do you want me to find Charlie?”

With that question, Ed Ryan brought Leona Lefebvre back from the brink of the abyss she had been floating in. She had been convinced up until that moment that she was in fact dead and dreaming, that the release from her captors was in fact her imagination carrying her to the great beyond that she had been taught existed since she was four years old. Ed had offered her the one thing that she hadn’t allowed to let herself think about or dwell on for more than an instant every day because if she did, she would sink. She nodded into Ed’s hand.

The words were too hard to say.

Ed knew exactly where Charlie was and had been for the last ten days. After they thought Lee was dead, he had stopped reporting. Stopped coming into the office, stopped accepting assignments. He had literally stopped in every sense of the word. Charlie had even stopped going to the modest apartment that he and Lee shared. Charlie had found himself the shittiest, cheapest bar in Phnom Penh and lived in the back room of that bar, giving up sobriety. Ed fished out his own wallet and pressed a couple of bills into the Cambodian soldier’s hands asking if they would fetch the wayward Charlie Skinner from his personal corner of hell and bring him here.

Leona had no concept of time anymore except that it was night and not day. Ed was pacing the room like a lion and she sat in the chair. The chair was a strange sensation; after all chairs were reserved for officers and interrogations in the world she just inhabited. Someone brought her some water and she was skeptical about it, being given something freely without condition suddenly bothered her now. A lot of things were going to bother her now and she was only scratching the surface. Her hands shook as she held the Styrofoam cup. She lost some of the water on the first try but found that she had calmed enough not to spill by the next cup.

When the door burst open, she dropped the cup and pulled herself tight as a ball, balancing on the chair. She was irrationally scared and making herself small was the impulse that now prevailed. The two soldiers that had ferried her and her cohorts from the roadside arrived here from their second destination, dragging a familiar person between them. Ed was there at once, trying to pull Charlie to his feet. The attempt was almost futile.

“Wha da fuck?” Charlie slurred. “Ed.”

“I don’t even know where to start other than I’m sorry you’ve been suffering for the last month. I couldn’t just call you with this news; you needed to be right here for this.”

Ed dragged Charlie up as best as he could and led him to the small figure that was curled in a ball, slowly rocking herself, hiding her face. “It’s Lee,” Ed said softly. “They found her this morning on the roadside in the country. The army brought her here as fast as they could.”

Charlie drops to his knees at this point, his mind a haze as he tried to process what it was that was just said to him. He’s looking at this ball of a human being and isn’t even sure what to make of this but his heart just blurts the word he had tried to banish from his vocabulary. “Leona.”

It is as if something snaps in her because Charlie was the only one that ever called her by her given name. Her head shoots up to see this mess of a human being on his knees in front of her and it is as if she’s seeing him for the first time. The same face that greeted her as she looked up from the minefield she had been stranded in all those months ago. There lines of worry that he had on his face were so pronounced now and his eyes were red and dark at the same time. His clothes as filthy as her prison uniform.

When their eyes meet, truly meet, he is sobered and now she is drunk in her own tears. She hadn’t allowed herself to cry for countless days but seeing Charlie Skinner there on his knees in front of her was her complete undoing. All of the fear and shame she had endured was now released. He pulls her into his chest and she eventually stumbles off the chair and they are tangled as they sit on the concrete floor and he just holds her as she desperately sobs.

It’s the most sobering sound he’s ever heard in his entire life and Charles Skinner vows there and now that he will never let anything happen to cause Leona Lefebvre to cry like this ever again.


	2. Chapter 2

Saturday, May 1, 1971   
5:45am  
Ed Ryan’s Mercedes  
Streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Leona still had no concept of time. She couldn’t have told you how long they were huddled on the floor as she drained herself of all of the misery she had been holding inside. Finally, finally, she could cry no more. It brought her body rebelling in physical pain to bring it to a stop. When she was finally done, she retreated back into herself and her silence and let Charlie and Ed talk. She wasn’t being passive about listening to what they said, in fact quite the opposite. She listened to their words with great attention. She was choosing not to comment because, well, she had yet to disagree with anything they had said.

Ed was taking them back to their shared apartment in Phnom Penh. Charlie wanted to get the both of them cleaned up and in a few hours go to the American hospital to have her looked over and checked for malaria. Leona knew this was a good idea, she was almost certain she was sick and she wasn’t about to tell anyone about the excruciating pain she was having by simply going to the bathroom. She didn’t want to scare Charlie anymore then he had already been scared. Other than that, she didn’t know what she wanted right now. She just leaned into Charlie as much as she possibly could and he kept an arm around her while they road in the backseat of Ed’s car.

They traded goodbyes, Charlie giving Ed a firm grip on the shoulder as Charlie carried her out of the car and up the three flights of stairs without a word and without a complaint. Charlie set Leona down because he was all thumbs with the keys for a moment, like he had forgotten the concept. She padded into the apartment slowly, blocking his renewed attempt to carry her over the threshold like a bride, looking at the place in some sort of wonder. It was always a horrible hole in the wall and was never anything to be proud of but it was theirs, it was something that they had shared.

“I’m going to draw a bath for you,” He tells her.

She nods, “Oui.” Yes.

He steps past her the few yards to the bathroom and she hears the rumble of the water. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she decides that she needs to watch the miracle that is running water and she finds herself hovering in the doorway as she watches him work. He’s on his knees, sleeves rolled up as he uses a bowl they kept in the bathroom to stir the water around, in an attempt to equalize the water temperature. After a moment, he looks up to see her there, and stands in front of her. He undoes the first button and without any protest, undoes the rest and the shirt falls down her arms almost too quickly for him to do anything about it.

Every inch of her skin is grey; this is what he learns as her skin is reveled from beneath the prisoner’s shirt. She barely moves and it’s on the floor, just falling off her arms. He peels the shirt and underwear, beyond filthy off her body and she’s standing before him, devoid of the clothing, As an instinct, his hand are on her hips as he looks over her, looking for injuries greater than those in her mind and her feet. Satisfied that there are none, he helps to ease her into the tub.

The bandages on her feet swell with water at once and he decides to deal with that later. Charlie cuts the water off and Leona is soon just resting in the tub, staring at him as her arms loiter on the tub edges to keep her body upright. He finds the soap and a washcloth and without really asking shifts into a parental mode, washing her skin. He starts with her hands, writs, arms. He starts with her neck, collarbone, chest, breasts, Stomach to back, hips to her ass, back to her apex, thighs to knees and calves. It’s a slow process, but she doesn’t really mind. She just watches him work, at first her cheek to the cold ceramic of the tub and shifting off the ceramic to continue to watch him as he worked,

The water was dark and murky after his ministrations, so he drains the water. As it slips away, he caresses her face as if he’s trying to reassure himself that she is in fact really there. When the water is gone, he fills the tug again, using the same method as before, but with more care because this time, she’s already in the tub. When the water is back to where it was before, he repeats his actions again with her fingers and traces the same route as before. This time when he is done, the water is grey instead of dark. He looks at her as if to ask if she can handle one more bath and she nods to answer the unspoken question.

By the completion of the third bath, her skin is a gentle pink because of the washing but natural again, without the layers of grime she had been living under. He leans her forward to wash her hair and this takes three passes as well before the blonde has returned. He leaves her for a moment as the water drains to find the scissors to cut away the soaked bandages on her feet. He has to keep his anger at bay because now discovers that her feet are nothing more than a twisted soggy mess, almost as if they were bags of jelly. He rinses her wounds and she audibly hisses at the discomfort, but voices no complaint as tends to her. When he is done, he carries her out of the tub onto the bed. He uses strips of a bed sheet to replace the bandages while she towels herself dry. When he is satisfied, with his work he finds her a clean pair of underwear, helps her to get them on and one of his clean shirts to cover her.

“My turn,” he simply says as he disappears into the bathroom and Leona gently lies back on the bed, listening to all the sounds of his bath. She doesn’t know what to think or what to do now other than listen. She cannot shift her brain way from the concept that she has to listen for things that might prove to be advantageous to her later, she supposes.


	3. Chapter 3

Saturday, May 1, 1971   
8:16am  
Calmette Hospital  
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

This was the first time they had been separated, but it was a necessity at this point, so Charlie loitered in the hallway with Ed. The journey here was not smooth and they had ended up here at Calmette, the French hospital, after Ed indicated it would be where Leona could get the best care in the country. But Charlie could tell something was wrong and Ed didn’t give voice to what it was. Normally Ed was always friendly, outgoing and kind. He was still someone that could verbally cut someone to the bone, but to Charlie and a number of his colleagues, Ed was nothing more a jolly looking elf. The fact that he wasn’t being playful and talkative was a tip to Charlie that something else was going on.

“So are you going to tell me what’s going on, finally?” Charlie asked Ed, pacing the hallway outside Leona’s hospital room as Ed sat in a metal folding chair. “You’re acting strange.”

Ed held his head in his hands before finally dragging them off his face and looking at Charlie. “I don’t even know where to start, Charlie.”

“Well, pick something and we’ll go from there.”

“Wire lines are lit up. Someone from the group that found her talked. I’ve got stacks of requests photos, interviews. I’m told the telex ticker at the main office has not stopped since midnight.”

“Oh my God, Ed, you’ve see her right? She’s in no shape for any of that crap! Not to mention there is no way she wants to be the story.”

“Charlie, don’t you think I know that? Give me some fucking credit here. Why do you think I steered you here to Calmette? The Americans are hot to find her. I’ve got honor among thieves from the press but I can’t speak for the American military, especially after Atlantis Media Group opened their wallets.”

Charlie stopped his pace and even though he was a good foot away from the wall, leaned for it. “Oh fuck. How much?”

“Photographs mid four figures, interview low four figures, phone call five figures. Extraction finally broke six.”

“Her father is offering one hundred thousand dollars to send her back to the United States? Are you serious?”

“Why do you think we couldn’t have gone to the Americans? We’d both be dead and she’d be hog tied to a jeep.”

“Vivid.” Charlie responded. He looked at Ed, who was looking up at the celling now, as if he was trying to find words. “What else Ed?”

“The sad part is and this is in no way her fault Charlie, I’ve got the wives of some of the guys that are missing calling the office, with renewed hope that that their husbands are alive and they are just breaking my black heart.”

Charlie slid down the wall to sit on the floor. “Please, please tell me you have a cigarette.”

“Yeah,” Ed fished a pack out of his pocket, taking one for him and tossing the pack across the hall to Charlie. Moments later, the lighter followed. A symphony of moment between friends as Charlie returned the cigarettes and lighter flying across the hall. “I have an idea, you’re not going to like it, but hear me out.” Ed held his hands in front of him, ready for the pushback. “All the press I’ve talked to so far don’t want the stories. In fact,” Ed said softly, “They want you to have them.”

Charlie blinked and shook his head. “No, no, no. I’m not taking that money.”

“Do you have any money left, Charlie? I heard about how you’ve drank your way through this city in the last few weeks. I heard how much you dropped at Chantal’s – it is a god damned miracle you are alive, Charlie.”

Charlie decided at this point that looking at Ed was going to be shameful at best, so he chose to look at the floor.

“Where’s your watch Charlie?” Ed asked pointedly.

“You know what Ed? Fuck you.” Charlie’s head shot up and started at Ed intently, eyes shimmering.

“I fought every instinct not to mess with you man, because you were grieving. Grieving for losing something everyone in this god forsaken place wants so badly, to simply be loved. I think part of me wanted to leave you capsized as you worked your way through this because I was and am jealous of you, but it took a turn recently Charlie and I wasn’t sure what to think.” Ed reached into his pocket and pulled out a wristwatch. “I was keeping an eye on you man. I thought for sure I was about to have to bury you. But your angel returned and not a minute too soon.”

Ed chucked the watch across the hall to Charlie who caught it; it was his wristwatch, the one he sold days ago to fuel a few more nights of drinking.

“I’m going to front you the interview money, Charlie. We’re only talking a six of inches of paper and I bet she’d even write it for you. Write it and then you and Lee get the hell out of town.”

Charlie looked at the watch a minute longer and put it on his wrist. “Why would we get out of town?”

“APF in all their excitement to report that she is in fact alive may have called her family and told them where she was. You can’t stay at that apartment much longer.”

“Wonderful.” He said sarcastically.

“You’re going to take my car-“

“We’re not going to take your car.”

“You’re going to take my car,” Ed said again forcefully. “You’re going to take my car and go out to my rental house on the river. Got a nice maid there that can even cook for you if you want, or you can kick her to the curb. Doesn’t matter to me what you do when you’re out there, just figure it out you two, huh? Help her through this and figure out what the two of you are going to do with the rest of your lives, okay? I don’t think I have to tell you that life and living it is paramount, now do I?”

“I guess not.” Charlie said, somewhat deflated.

“Plus with that one article, you guys can live like royalty for months. Consider it your relaxation and rehabilitation break. You need one desperately anyway.” Ed took a moment to enjoy his cigarette. “I’d take her to Saigon and buy her one of those beautiful dresses and marry her if I were you. If you don’t, I just might.” Ed smiled at Charlie.

Charlie nodded and looked up at his friend. “Thanks Ed.”

“Always man, always.”


End file.
